But when you start badgering them to stop smoking, they may pick up an e cig or vaporizer and justify it with “It’s safe, it’s not a real cigarette with all of those bad chemicals.”

I’m not a smoker but I would think that most individuals who put the cigarettes down think that vaping is safe and not harmful.

And though they think they are taking a step towards quitting, 76.8% of e-cigarette users go back to conventional cigarettes. Or they may have never actually left the habit.

Reuters found 75% of people who use electronic cigarettes or other vaporizing devices continue to also smoke traditional tobacco products.

But is vaping really safe? What are the dangers of vaping and e-cigs? Are there any side effects of vaping? And, is vaping safer than smoking?

These were all questions I had.

So I wanted to put together a post to go over these side effects and explain to you the chemicals in electronic cigarettes and compare vaping vs smoking.

But before we take a closer look into the toxicity of e-cigarettes, let’s take a look at what these devices really are.

What Are E-cigarettes?

An estimated 52.9 million people in North America currently smoke cigarettes. I already mentioned almost half a million people die each year from smoking related diseases.

Which is why…

Researchers have continuously tried to design alternatives for smoking without the dangerous side effects.

Vaporizing all started when a Chinese pharmacist named Hon Lik, invented e-cigarettes in Beijing in 2003. He wanted an alternative to classic cigarettes after his father passed away.

He intended to help people quit smoking after his father passed from lung cancer, how ironic!

It had taken a few years for the United States to catch onto the e-cigarette bandwagon since they were introduced in 2006-2007.

Despite many unanswered questions on their safety, efficacy and impact on public health, e-cigarettes have rapidly penetrated into the Unites States markets.

Today, nearly 500 brands and 7,700 flavors of e-cigarettes are available in the market; they have become a hot new trend among young smokers.

The population of “vapers” is now up to roughly 10% of U.S. adults and 15% of U.S. adults under the age of 40. These numbers are on the rise since the U.S. government estimated this at about 2.6% in 2013!

Alternative tobacco products such as e-cigarettes may cause serious health problems, including cancer due to the chemicals and toxins present in the e-liquid.

According to the 2013 review by The Group to Alleviate Smoking Pollution (GASP) there is enough evidence showing e-cigarette liquids contains 42 harmful chemicals that are known to cause health effects, are toxic, or may cause cancer.

Luckily, smokers only take up only 1 to 2 milligrams of this drug per cigarette.

Nicotine is known to stimulate your central nervous system resulting in the rise of:

Blood pressure

Respiration

Heart rate

Almost all e-cigarettes contain nicotine. E-cigarettes do not contain a nicotine free vapor. Some claim to be nicotine-free which actually contain its primary metabolite called cotinine, which has similar side effects as nicotine.

Formaldehyde and Acetaldehyde are two carcinogens that are released by e-cigarettes when heated by the batteries when set at a high voltage.

A recently published letter in The New England Journal of Medicine asserted the presence of formaldehydereleased by e-cigarettes at levels much higher than the maximum EPA recommends for humans.

Jonathan Thornburg from RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C. says:

“The mass of particles in the vapors is about 3 milligrams per cubic meter of air, he says, or about 100 times as high as the Environmental Protection Agency’s 24-hour exposure limit for levels of fine air particles. Thornburg’s group’s analyses predict that some 40 percent of these inhaled particles would deposit in the lungs’ smallest, deepest airways.”

OMG!

Another study suggested the incremental lifetime cancer risk associated with long-term vaping and inhaling formaldehyde is 15 times higher when vaping at 5.0 volts.

Think about this…

Wouldn’t you agree that an alternative that also leads to cancer, sort of defeats the purpose of having an alternative itself?

Flavoring Agents

The addition of such flavors masks the unpleasant taste of e-cigarettes.

Although these food additives are classifies as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the FDA, they have not been proven safe for inhalation.

Currently e-cigarettes are manufactured in almost 7,700 different flavors, the most common among them being:

Cherry

Cheesecake

Cinnamon

Bubblegum

Fruit Squirts

Watermelon

Cotton Candy

Double Apple

Blue Water Punch

Diacetyl is an e-cigarette flavoring agent which is linked to obstructive lung disease when inhaled.

In a study on rats, when inhaling diacetyl the mice saw a loss of >10% body weight. Other mice suffered from rhinitis (hay fever) and laryngitis, and bronchitis. The amounts of diacetyl that the rats could withstand was between 50ppm – 100ppm. Concentrations above 100ppm resulted in death of the mice.

I could not find any studies on the limits in ppm for humans. I think that would be a little unethical…

But, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health evaluated the presence of diacetyl, acetyl propionyl and acetoin in 51 vape and e-cig flavors.

They found at least 1 of these chemicals in 92% of the samples, with 76% containing diacetyl.

Despite these results…

The tobacco industry continues to aggressively glamorize the use of e-cigarette in commercials and offers them in candy flavors to attract younger adults and teenagers.

In a report from Monitoring The Future (dot) org, of about 50,000 students across 400 schools resulted in nearly 4,500 (9%) of eighth-graders, 8,000 (16%) of 10th-graders and 8,500 (17%) of high school seniors said they had inhaled an e-cigarette or “vaped” in the past month.

Other Toxins

Apart from the above mentioned toxins, e-cigarettes also release gaseous forms of particulates and metals such as lead, arsenic, copper, aluminum and nickel.

A 2013 study indicated that nickel occurs in concentrations 2 to 100 times more in e-cigarettes compared regular cigarettes.

E-cigarettes and vapes have also been found to have similar levels of toxins and cancer causing particles as regular cigarettes.

But…

The good thing is that these metals are found to actually be less than the Permissible Daily Exposure (PDE) when inhaled from e-cigs.

PHEW!

Lead, nickel, strontium, tin, zinc, copper, and other metals are all found in electronic cigarettes. The levels of these inhaled in the toxic aerosol range from >5 to >10,000 levels lower than the safety limits.

Although they are less than the safety limits, the remaining toxins and chemicals are a concern.

Bottom Line

If you are a nonsmoker why would you start vaping? After reading this research, it has no health benefits and toxins including:

Cancer causing chemicals

Nicotine

Unnecessary metals

Try using FDA-approved methods to quit smoking such as nicotine patches and gums.

Consult your physician before you take any step towards dealing with your tobacco addiction. Some cities like Boston, Los Angeles and New York have passed laws against the public use of e-cigarettes in public areas.

The FDA has proposed new regulations to take effect in August of 2016 that extends its authority over many tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.

E-cigarettes have not been around for long enough to be able to determine all the harmful side effects. Based on current studies, that’s enough for me to not want to pick up the vaping habit.

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7 Comments

Diti
on July 25, 2016 at 1:20 pm

Great informative article on knowing what vaping actually is and how it ill-treats your health… I am really not in favor of e-cigarettes to help fight tobacco addiction… There are better ways fighting it which I want to share with everyone… Nicotine patches and Nicotine chewing gums are some of the things I know about that help and you might consider using it in place of e-cigarettes…

I disagree (on a overall level, certain individual circumstances will prove otherwise), I don’t think that patches or nicotine gum are any good for stopping smoking.
It plays on that fact that you are addicted to the nicotine… which sure nicotine is addictive by the effects wear off quickly, as in within hours.. Meaning if people were really addicted to nicotine, smokers wouldnt be able to make it through the night without waking up to get their fix.

Aaron great point! I agree with you to a certain extent, but I know people who actually wake up in the middle of the night to go outside and smoke cigarettes. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it varies person to person just like most other things. Thanks for your insight!